Bridie Smith and Nicky Phillips

Krystal Evans aims for women scientists' genius to be hidden no longer. Photo: Jason South

Ever heard of Dora Lush? She was an Australian microbiologist working in the 1940s on developing a vaccine for a deadly disease known as scrub typhus. She accidentally pricked her finger with a contaminated needle. Three weeks later, she died from the very disease she was trying to tame.

Hailed as a martyr for science by her contemporaries, she kept donating blood samples from her death bed at the Royal Melbourne Hospital until she died in May 1943.

However, this remarkable researcher is one of an unknown number of Australian women scientists with scant or no presence on online encyclopaedia Wikipedia. And in these digital times, that means you are effectively off-line.

According to web information company Alexa, Wikipedia is the sixth-most popular website globally. Yet even Wikipedia admits to a systematic bias when it comes to women in science, describing the subject as ‘’woefully under-represented’’.

Next month, the Australian Academy of Science plans to change that, hosting a Women of Science ‘’Wikibomb’’ event inspired by a similar call to arms by the Royal Society, London.

The power of the free, collaborative online encyclopaedia, which turns 14 in January, is not lost on the more than 60 volunteers who have signed up as writers and editors.

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"Wikipedia is an excellent first reference point for people,’’ said Walter and Eliza Hall Institute malaria researcher and Dora Lush fan Krystal Evans. ‘’But having a silence in that space means that the achievements of Australian women in science becomes invisible,’’ she said.

Dr Evans has nominated Miss Lush as a scientist to profile during the ‘’wiki workout’’, which highlights the low digital profile of women scientists past and present.

According to a 2011 Wikipedia editor survey, nine out of 10 Wikipedia editors are male.

To research her subject, Dr Evans trawled through Walter and Eliza Hall Institute annual reports. What she found was how important Miss Lush’s work was for the war effort.

A vaccine for scrub typhus became a research priority during World War II, with allied troops in the Pacific exposed to the scrub-dwelling mite that transfers the infection by biting. In Papua New Guinea alone, 3000 cases were reported among Australian troops, with hundreds of soldiers dying from the disease.

Miss Lush’s colleague at the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, Nobel laureate Sir Frank Macfarlane Burnet, described her as the ‘’most outstandingly competent’’ bacteriologist with whom he had ever worked.

The National Health and Medical Research Council named its biomedical research postgraduate scholarship in her honour on the 50th anniversary of her death in 1993.

‘’She was a pioneering female scientist during the early 20th century and she was making a contribution to better humanity in terms of her work for the war effort,’’ said Dr Evans, a recipient of the scholarship named after her science hero.

The inaugural winner of the academy’s Nancy Millis Medal for outstanding research in the natural sciences by early to mid-career Australian women, University of New South Wales marine ecologist Emma Johnston is among the scientists nominated as worthy of a Wikipedia page.

‘’My first response to being nominated to have a Wiki page was, ‘Oh, I’m not that important’, but I think that’s symptomatic of a culture we have in society where we encourage women to be modest and not to put themselves forward and so they become invisible,’’ she said.

While the academy’s Wikibomb hopes to remedy the low profile of some of our most successful female scientists, new data on the number of women who participate in research shows women are chronically under-represented. The number of women who applied for research grants from the government’s major funding body, the Australian Research Council, was significantly lower than male applicants at any point in their career.

The dearth of female applications was most pronounced among senior researchers, those who had been in working in their field for more than 20 years, where only 10per cent to 15 per cent of applicants were female.

But even women at an early stage of their career - zero to 10 years after completing a PhD - were applying at about half the rate of males with the same level of experience.

Head of the ARC Aidan Byrne said while the low numbers of women in research were not unique to Australia, it was a ‘‘really worrying’’ trend. ‘‘It’s not something we should be proud of,’’ he said.

Professor Byrne said this situation was partly a consequence of historical hiring policies in universities that advantaged men.

‘‘It’s also a consequence of the enormous drivers and pressures on women, particularly in academic environments.’’

In the sciences, similar numbers of men and women completed PhDs, after which the number of women in research dropped away.

Despite the low numbers of women applying for grants, those who did were awarded grants as often as their male peers at all stages of their career.

Professor Byrne said the data - the number of researchers who applied for the ARC’s major funding round in 2013 and 2014 - was a good proxy to examine the amount of research being conducted in Australia.

The intense competition for research money meant taking a career break could have a detrimental effect on a researcher's future grant prospects.

Professor Byrne said when awarding grants assessors were told to consider whether career interruptions such as childbirth had impacted a researcher’s output.

The pressure to raise children, move with partners and look after elderly relatives fell disproportionately on women, he said.

‘‘We understand and are sensitive to this.’’

But it is not just the research sector where women are under-represented. Data gathered by the Education Department in 2011 found low numbers of women working in senior positions in academia, where people can work in research, teaching, administration or a mix of all three.

In the natural and physical sciences, the number of females appointed to positions above senior lecturer status was just 17 per cent.